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00:00:01
16: Ruthy Taylor Owner & Broker of Mosaic Real Estate
128 Plays1 year ago
Brought to you by Grit City Women - A female forward organization that nurtures a creative approach to empowering female entrepreneurs, small business owners, and leaders in Tacoma. Join host Krystle Edwards and Ruthy Taylor as they discuss:
1. Season of life with career and family
2. Leveraging sphere of influence to build your business
3. Value of being intentional with social media
Learn more about Ruthy:
Ruthy.MosaicRealEstate.com
Follow : @ruthyanntaylor
1. Season of life with career and family
2. Leveraging sphere of influence to build your business
3. Value of being intentional with social media
Learn more about Ruthy:
Ruthy.MosaicRealEstate.com
Follow : @ruthyanntaylor
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Transcript
Introduction to Gritty is the New Pretty
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Gritty is the New Pretty, a podcast by Grit City Women. On this episode of Gritty is the New Pretty, we're featuring Ruthie Taylor, broker and owner of Mosaic Real Estate. Looking for ways to support Grit City Women and keep these podcasts going? Visit our online store at gritcitywomen.com. Hi, Ruthie. Hello, hello. How are you doing today?
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm excited to chat with you. Yeah, I'm really excited about it too. How about you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Ruthie Taylor's Journey into Real Estate
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm a mom of two girls, age nine and 11, which is really fun and challenging. I co-own Mosaic Real Estate with my husband. I've been selling real estate for about nine years and been living in the Pacific Northwest. Gosh, I think 13 years now. How did you get started on that journey? I got started in real estate
00:00:58
Speaker
because my husband was in real estate. He was kind of doing it part time. And I had quit my corporate sales job to stay home with the kids. And after a couple of years, I thought I really thought I wanted to be a stay at home mom. And I tried that and I was like, this is really, really hard. And I really had the desire to go back to work, but I didn't want to go back to work for corporate America. And so I joined my husband
00:01:27
Speaker
who ran a team at the time. And I was just a buyer's agent learning everything that there was to learn about real estate. And then the long story short, we grew one of the largest teams in the area.
00:01:41
Speaker
We became franchise owners of a big, big box name in real estate for a few years. And then we decided we wanted to just go out on our own and do it our own way.
Launching Mosaic Real Estate
00:01:52
Speaker
And so we opened our doors to Mosaic Real Estate, March of 2020, which was right when lockdowns hit. So it was a really unique time to open a business and start a brokerage. But currently three years later,
00:02:08
Speaker
We have 180 plus agents and we're one of the fastest independent growing brokerages in the area. So it's been really fun, really challenging, really hard and really exciting and fulfilling all at the same time.
00:02:21
Speaker
Congratulations on the success and the transitioning. I want to jump back a little bit because you mentioned that you took time off of you quit your corporate job and you wanted to stay home with the kids. So I recently went through a similar transition. And so I'm just curious to hear your thoughts about that because I think that resonates with a lot of women that are working right now and thinking of starting a family.
Career Shift and Motherhood
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm kind of strange. I feel like when I was a child, I didn't have dreams of having a family. I had dreams of being a business woman. We had very little means growing up. My dad was enlisted in the military and he would get home from work and then go back to a different job just to make ends meet. My mom
00:03:16
Speaker
is from Korea. She spoke very, very little English, only has a fourth grade education and she bagged groceries at the local commissary and it was really hard growing up. And I just had dreams of
00:03:31
Speaker
not having that for my life. And so I just had big dreams of being a business woman. I had no idea what that looked like, but that was sort of, I guess, probably the root of the direction and the path that I took. And so I had been in sales positions ever since I was 18 years old.
00:03:51
Speaker
And I met my husband a little later in life. We met on eHarmony. I was 30 when we met and we met and married really quick. So we met, got engaged at three months, got married at seven months.
00:04:07
Speaker
And we both quit our jobs to travel and, uh, we sold everything that we had, quit our jobs and just traveled overseas until we ran out of money. Um, because we're like, you know what, we're probably never going to be able to do this if and when we ever have children, because we, like I said, met a little later in life. And, um, long story short, a couple of years later, I got pregnant. I was working a corporate sales job and.
00:04:35
Speaker
I had had a lot of success in my career prior to getting pregnant. And I just felt like, you know what? There's not this pinnacle of achievement that I want anymore. I feel like I achieved a lot of success. So I was like, I think I really want to just do this stay at home mom thing. I want to be a stay at home mom. I don't strive to make more money or have more success in business. And so that's what I decided to do.
Passion for Real Estate
00:05:03
Speaker
It was so, so hard. And because I was a little bit older when I got pregnant, I had geriatric pregnancies. I had two back to pack, so I was 32 and 34 when I had my girls. And when my oldest was two and my youngest was six months old,
00:05:24
Speaker
I don't know. I felt like I went through the hardest season of motherhood. I know some women really, really love toddlerhood. I just couldn't wait for them to get past toddlerhood. I love the newborn stage. Toddlerhood just about killed me. And I think maybe that was my motivation to go back to work and work with adults and have adult conversations and feel like my brain was, I don't know, being utilized.
00:05:50
Speaker
in a professional manner, not that it's not when you're at home. You are constantly, your brain is being utilized just in a different way when you are at home. And so I got my real estate license and I went back to work slowly. And then when I realized, wow, I really, really enjoy this and I started working more and more, we hired a nanny to help out with the kids at home. And, you know,
00:06:19
Speaker
just took off from there. I really fell in love with the real estate profession and haven't looked back. Thank you for sharing that. I feel like we have a lot of similarities because I was the same way. I didn't envision having a family when I was a kid. I always thought I was going to be studying animals in the jungle or something.
00:06:40
Speaker
weird thing like that. So I guess where I am today is quite different, but I achieved a lot in my career before I had my son. And then when I had him,
00:06:54
Speaker
We had just gone through COVID and there was that formula shortage. And I was trying to like nurse and also work full time and feed my child because he couldn't eat solid foods yet. And it was pretty stressful. So I definitely can see where it's a hard situation. And I ended up looking for other opportunities because
00:07:17
Speaker
uh we had a transition in leadership and they decided to take away telework and this was kind of before i came back and without understanding any impact onto their people and and i just said you know i am gone so much working i spend more time at work than i do seeing my son so i found a new position that allowed that work-life balance and
00:07:40
Speaker
I never thought I would be that person. You know, I never thought I would be like, I want to be home more with my family. Not that that's a bad thing, but just, I just, I was such a hustler, I guess, you know, I wanted to work.
Balancing Work and Family
00:07:53
Speaker
So I think it's important to acknowledge that it's okay to take a break or it's okay to transition to something different because, you know, look at how it blossomed for you. It changed into something incredibly successful.
00:08:08
Speaker
Thank you. And I do want to acknowledge that whatever you decide doesn't have to be that way forever. Now that my girls are nine and 11, it's a different season of life that we're in. The challenges of social pressures. One of my youngest is going through some medical things. I feel so blessed and privileged to be in a position that I can really choose because I'm self-employed how much I want to work.
00:08:36
Speaker
and prioritize my family in this current season of life that we're in. And so we're just in a season right now where if I don't prioritize my family, it's going to have really terrible repercussions. My kids need me more than I felt like they needed me when they were one and two. It's just a different season of life.
00:09:01
Speaker
That's the crazy thing about parenthood is you just never know what's around the corner because you're figuring it out live as it happens. And when you're self-employed, you get to decide how many hours a day that you want to work, how to prioritize your day. So if you want to choose, I don't want to say choose spending more time with your kids. I think we all want that.
00:09:28
Speaker
But we have the opportunity when we're self-employed to choose those hours that we save, that we shut our phone down versus when we're working for somebody else. And we're doing the nine to five and coming home at five and then shuttling the kids to practice and homework and all of that. I have the privilege to be able to take my daughter to see her specialist and her doctor's appointments.
00:09:52
Speaker
I don't, I don't love that. I don't love that we're going through that, but I feel really blessed that I can be there. I don't have to take time off of, you know, get, get my boss's permission to go take my doctor or my, to take my daughter to the doctor. And so it's a, it's a unique scenario, raising kids and working and, and, or being self-employed and trying to run your own business. Um, it's a, it's a struggle every day to figure out how to prioritize family.
00:10:21
Speaker
spouses, work, clients, and everything in between.
00:10:29
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely. I definitely am happy that I was able to find a place that allowed that work schedule flexibility. I think it's really, really important, especially for women, since sometimes they tend to carry some of the burden of, you know, doctor's appointments with kids and other things. But it just kind of goes to show that how the world is changing still with
00:10:58
Speaker
telework and all those kinds of things and so I never really thought I would be in the midst of that and now that I am I'm just like so grateful that I was able to find this opportunity and I'm so much happier being able to
00:11:12
Speaker
see my son in the morning and on my lunch break and not feel like I'm spending all my time away from him. There's going to be seasons of life where you're like, I cannot wait for you to go back to school, so I don't have to see you for nine hours a day. It waxes and wanes, this love works.
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And there might be a time where I'm like, okay, I'm ready to go back to something different and be in person more. So I think it is scary and it was really scary transition. I built a pretty successful career where I was before and moved up quickly. And so it was literally a career change and it's scary, but I think the benefits really outweigh the risk when it comes to taking those chances and those opportunities.
00:11:59
Speaker
So and you've definitely really grown with your business, like you said, and also you are very popular on social media.
Social Media Influence in Real Estate
00:12:11
Speaker
So I'm hoping that you can share some of your secrets and how you kind of became to be this really well known influencer in the real estate industry in Tacoma. Thank you. You know, I think women tend to look at their success
00:12:30
Speaker
as luck. For a long time, when people would ask me this question, I had severe imposter syndrome. I was just like, I don't know. I think I just got lucky. I think it was the timing. When I look back, I can see the energy and effort that I really put into social media to see the success. Now, I think a lot of it was. Timing has a lot to do with everything.
00:12:58
Speaker
I got into social media back in the day of mommy blogging. And I was a mom blogger. So this is when I was staying at home. One of the things that I was doing to kind of fill my time is blogging. And I really enjoyed that. And the social media, Instagram was so new and so different back then. It was just photos. And it was
00:13:24
Speaker
the blogging community and other moms that I was connecting with on social media. When I had my kids, I was a new mom in Tacoma. I didn't have friends. I didn't know other moms. And I really was struggling with that loneliness because motherhood is so, so hard. And I was like, well, I'm just going to create a community. I know that there's got to be other women who feel like this.
00:13:52
Speaker
So back then, so this was back in 2000 and maybe 13, I created a group originally on Instagram called The Village 253, and then I transitioned it to a Facebook group. And I didn't want more social media friends because that is great, but that's not fulfilling, right? Sometimes you just need another mom to cry with. You need another mom to pray with. You need another mom to commiserate with.
00:14:20
Speaker
And I just wanted to meet other local moms. So I created the Village 253 to gather moms in real life. So it was so simple because who had the time, right? When you have a six month old and a...
00:14:32
Speaker
two year old. So it was like play dates in the park. It was clothing swaps. It was wine nights. It was book clubs. It was movie nights. And this is where some of my closest friendships came from is just, I would post these events like, hey, I'm going to go to this park, you know, bring your kids, bring some snacks.
00:14:52
Speaker
You know, if we get to hang out, great. If you're chasing your kids the whole time, we tried. And so that's where my local following started was with these local moms, right? Because I think a lot of people were feeling the same way. I just voiced it. I was like, Hey, I'm struggling as a mom. I need friends. Who wants to be my friend? And I think a lot of us felt that way that we just didn't have the courage to say it.
00:15:18
Speaker
And so I did and I grew this community and that community still exists today. However, I will say since COVID, it's been very, I haven't really been an active part of that and I'm really hoping to revive it because that's really where my heart and passion lies is with community and friendship and how we're not designed to go through this life alone. And so that's originally where my local following started. And this was before I got into real estate
00:15:47
Speaker
So it was a natural transition when I got into real estate. You know, a lot of people grow their business through their sphere of influence. Well, my sphere of influence was just local moms and.
00:15:58
Speaker
You know what? Moms and women are the ones who tend to make the decisions when it comes to real estate purchases. They're the ones who want the kitchen in a certain way, the yard for the kids and the dog. That is how I originally grew my real estate business and my social media is through this community of moms.
00:16:20
Speaker
And then it just sort of grew from there and social media has changed drastically from, you know, 2012, 2013.
00:16:29
Speaker
But it was a platform I had already been using and active on. So it wasn't like, it wasn't new. A lot of times people get into real estate and they're like, okay, now I gotta start this business profile and I gotta be professional. I didn't, I never created a business profile. I just was me. And I was like, if you like me and you connect with me and you see that I'm a hot mess with my kids, now I take my business really seriously. I'm not gonna be a hot mess with your transaction.
00:16:57
Speaker
But I think I was just always really honest and vulnerable on social media. I don't know. It felt like almost – I don't know if this feels dramatic, but it felt like a live journal about the day.
00:17:16
Speaker
And I stepped away from blogging when I started real estate. And so Instagram kind of became this mini blog where I was still documenting my kids and the milestones and connecting again with these local moms. As time grew and my social media following grew, it took me a while to figure out, wow, all of my business is coming from this Facebook group and my Instagram account.
Authenticity and Connection Online
00:17:45
Speaker
Once that like ding, ding, ding went off in my head, I was like, oh, wow, I've got to capitalize on this because this was, I don't think a lot of people at the time were getting a lot of business from social media. And when I looked at my business and I actually analyzed it, I was like, a hundred percent of my business is coming from social media. That's when I got serious and started to strategize. I actually created
00:18:10
Speaker
you know, a spreadsheet. I was taking the names of people that were following me on social media that I was having interactions with. And then I became really intentional about commenting, about following people, getting invested in their lives, sending
00:18:26
Speaker
little, what we call them, notes of gratitude, just sending things in the mail that said, hey, congratulations, I just saw that you got a puppy, or I saw that your husband got promoted, or I saw you had some medical stuff. I'm so glad to hear great news. I just became real intentional about following people's lives. And instead of just hitting that like button,
00:18:51
Speaker
really creating conversations with people and getting to know people online. And I met my husband on the internet. So I feel like my whole adult life, I've met everybody that I know for the most part through the internet.
00:19:05
Speaker
Yeah, so it didn't feel weird to me to meet clients through the internet. And maybe that's because I grew up as a military brat and I was constantly moving and I was constantly having to meet new people. And when you're, you know, I didn't have an email until I was in college, right? So like technology as an adult has
00:19:23
Speaker
changed so much and it became the way that I found community with every single one of my moves because I'm like, I've got toddlers. I can't go to a networking meeting. I'm still nursing. I've got like, you know, like I'm a hot mess. I cannot do the things that typical men can do or women who don't have kids can do. I got to figure out how I can connect with as many people as possible
00:19:49
Speaker
when I've got, you know, like spit up and on the back of my shirt and I'm leaking through the front of my shirt and I've got a blowout on the way to get gas in my car, you know. So social media was just the easiest way to connect with the most amount of people in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort on my part, if that makes sense.
00:20:13
Speaker
It absolutely makes sense. I think also that women, at least what I've noticed with my journey with great city women is we tend to
00:20:25
Speaker
really connect with stories. And so when you mentioned that your Instagram was really sort of a blog of your day and the story of your day, I feel like that is a big piece of connecting with your audience to see who is this woman, right? And even though I feel like I know you, even though we've never actually met before this, but because I follow you on social media,
00:20:52
Speaker
And so I think that that is really powerful, that when we have something to say and an experience to share, having that platform for women to feel like, oh, I'm not alone, and you providing that space for them, it builds that trust and it builds that feeling of like, wow, she's really connecting with me. She's commenting on my stuff. She really sees me. Of course I'm going to ask her to help me buy my house.
00:21:20
Speaker
I didn't connect those dots for a while. Like I said, when I finally connected those dots, I was like, I need to get strategic on this. That's really how I ended up growing my business or social media.
00:21:36
Speaker
When realtors ask me to tell me how to grow my business on social media, I do teach a lot of classes on this topic. I always start out every class with, I am not a guru. I don't study analytics.
00:21:55
Speaker
I'm just a human person who is willing to share my life and my business online. I think that's probably the biggest hangup of people is people feel really private. They don't want to show their kids on the internet. You don't have to. You really don't have to. I think what happens with a lot of
00:22:18
Speaker
I can only speak for realtors, but I got to imagine this is anyone, any entrepreneur going on this journey is we feel like once we become a business owner, we're supposed to have all the answers and now we have to act a certain way online. And I think I've just been really open at sharing my failures, sharing my struggles. Like the first time I took my real estate exam, I failed.
00:22:43
Speaker
And I don't fail anything. And that was a really, really hard thing to admit to the people who followed me that I failed at something. And sometimes I don't win the house for my clients. Now that's rare, but when the market was bananas, I didn't win every offer.
00:23:05
Speaker
And I think when I shared that online, all of a sudden my realtor following grew. It wasn't just local people. I connected now. I have a huge referral base because I have realtors who have connected with me on Instagram from
00:23:25
Speaker
Not just nationwide, but internationally. Because there's so much in this business that is so hard that, you know, nobody likes to share all the hard stuff. Real estate looks really glamorous from HGTV and selling Sunset and all that. And it is not. It is really hard. It is really, really hard. Over 80% of agents quit the business after two years because it's that hard.
00:23:50
Speaker
And so I think when I was just sharing some of the really hard things about real estate, all of a sudden I had a bunch of realtors following saying, oh my gosh, that sort of me too moments that really help you connect because you've been honest and vulnerable and
Social Media Success and Referrals
00:24:07
Speaker
When people have those me too moments, that's where really I believe trust starts to develop. So I've grown now a lot of my business because agents who follow me across the US refer business to me with their clients who are moving here.
00:24:23
Speaker
They don't know me, they just know my Instagram profile. I just feel so honored and blessed that people are choosing to trust me with their clients based on what they're seeing from me online.
00:24:42
Speaker
They don't know if that's true and authentic, but they're feeling as it is. And therefore they feel comfortable referring their clients to me. And I think the problem that most people get into when they start a new Instagram profile with their business is they start becoming people that they're not. They feel like they have to say, like I said earlier, say the right things, know all the things and put on this, you know, like,
00:25:09
Speaker
sports coat, fancy makeup, hair always has to be done.
00:25:14
Speaker
And if that is you, okay. But if you're like yoga pants and sweatshirts and you don't wear makeup and you're a hot mess in your personal life, but your business is banging, you're gonna connect with people if you are who you authentically are. And what I always tell agents is I am not for everybody. I am not controversial.
00:25:44
Speaker
I'm not exciting or funny. I look at realtors who are just really hilarious and entertaining. I'm like, gosh, I wish I was funny. It's just not me. I think you get to grow who you are in your business and you're following when you are just truly yourself.
00:26:06
Speaker
And I think people are craving that, which is almost ironic because you've been able to build those connections on social media. But I think there's a really dark side of social media where like you mentioned before, people are someone they're not. And you know, the dating apps, like you don't know if you're being catfish, you've got fitness influencers altering their photos, messing with people's idea of body image. You know, there's, there's a lot of stuff that isn't authentic.
00:26:36
Speaker
on social media and so having connections with people that are I think is really important because I know that sometimes you know people take breaks they're like I can't handle social media anymore I can't do it I can't do it and then they get back on because they're also wanting that connection
00:26:54
Speaker
So I think it's great that you've managed to really hone in on what's important. And I think that's connecting with your clients, connecting with people, and it's worked for you. So I'm definitely a big fan and I'm curious to know what's
00:27:14
Speaker
So you gave a lot of great advice, but what's like your one piece of advice that you would give women with a business or entrepreneurs on social media? Gosh, there's so many things that I want to share. But I feel like I have to say this because social media can be this slippery slope, right?
Mental Health and Social Media
00:27:36
Speaker
Our mental health
00:27:37
Speaker
is at risk with social media. We know all the statistics. We know people are falling asleep to scrolling on their phones. Scrolling on their phones, the first thing that they wake up. I am trying to figure out how to not give my kids a phone for as long as possible because I'm terrified about social media.
00:27:57
Speaker
So there is this mental health aspect. And like you said, a lot of people have to take that break. They have to shut it off because they go down these rabbit holes, right? And so my biggest piece of advice is time block. Be very protective of your time because social media is designed to keep us there.
00:28:20
Speaker
It is designed to draw us down these rabbit holes and if you are starting to feel anxiety, if you are starting to feel depressed, if you're feeling anything but like you're checking a box or you're connecting or this is bringing you joy, you got to figure out a different way to do it.
00:28:43
Speaker
I definitely have had those seasons where I'm like, I got to figure out how to do this better because it's eating my time. I'm highly unproductive and now I'm trapped in this comparison game. So I went through a season of unfollowing every account that made me feel bad. So if I would scroll and I'm like, it would just cause this anxiety or I'd feel comparison. There was a season I had to unfollow every single realtor that I followed because I was just like, man, they're doing this and this and this and I'm not doing that and therefore I suck.
00:29:12
Speaker
And that didn't happen in one day. That was a slow progression of decline that I didn't even realize was happening. And so social media is incredible and it's also incredibly disastrous. And so if we're going to choose to use it in our business, we have to protect our mental health and our productivity. So we have to figure out a way to do it either in time blocks
00:29:40
Speaker
to figure out what can I leverage out to somebody if this element of social media just drives me crazy? Who do I follow and not follow? Like a lot of times we like go down this rabbit hole of like clickbait, right? And then all of a sudden we're looking at something specific to our industry and then 30 minutes later we're like, I don't know, in some conspiracy theory like drama.
00:30:06
Speaker
I mean, everybody has been there, right? COVID time and election time are like the worst, right? Right. And so honestly, I wish I could share with you some great tips, but that's my biggest thing is, okay, packed your heart and your mind with social media and use it for good.
00:30:27
Speaker
Be somebody who is posting on social media that isn't making somebody else feel icky. My whole goal, the lens of everything that I post is, is this educating somebody? Is this making them feel knowledgeable? Making them feel warm fuzzies inside? Am I sharing something that is a connection point? Or am I making them laugh? Am I sharing something? Not that I'm funny, but am I sharing something that's funny?
00:30:55
Speaker
That helps me. That's the lens that I look through. If it's just depressing, I'm not going to share it. If it's clickbaity for entertainment purposes, I'm not going to share it. It's that self-control, that keyboard warrior thing that people have. It's like you just have to have self-control in what you post and what you consume.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:31:17
Speaker
I think that's a great piece of advice. I find myself struggling with the same thing. Like, why am I sitting here scrolling? Ew, I could be doing so many other things around the house or like with my business or exercising. And it is, it's addicting. And so I really appreciate your advice and your insight and your time to share your story with great city women. Thank you so much.
00:31:44
Speaker
Of course, I'm so happy to share. Thank you for having me. To learn more about Grit City Women, visit gritcitywomen.com or follow us on Instagram at gritcitywomen and we look forward to getting gritty with you.